How '80s Technology Made the Modern World

A surprising number of the technologies that define life today got their start in the 1980s. Take a trip back to the time of Pac-Man, Walkmans, and Reaganomics to revisit the tech that created the future.

Walkman

Walkman

For many people, the iPod isn't even its own device anymore—it's just an app nestled next to all the other things your smartphone can do. But while the iPod ruled the first decade of the 2000s, the 1980s belonged to the Sony Walkman, the gadget than did more than any other to birth the personal audio revolution. (It's No. 45 on PM's list of the 101 greatest gadgets.) Today there's so much computing power in your pocket that it's difficult to remember just how liberating and futuristic it felt to throw on some headphones and play your own personal soundtrack (bring extra AAs!).

Sony built the prototype just as the 1970s were coming to a close. By the end of the decade, Walkman had come to be the generic term for portable audiocassette players, and Sony had extended the brand into videocassettes and CDs (the Discman). For those of us who spent the '90s carrying around enormous cases of CDs and trying to stop our portable players from skipping, however, the iPod decade couldn't come fast enough.

VCR

VCR

Technically the videocassette recorder (VCR) was a child of the 1970s. But it conquered the world in the '80s. At the beginning of the decade, PM Editor-in-Chief Jim Meigs says on The 80s, only a handful of people owned the device. By the time the calendar turned to the '90s, nearly everyone had one—and electronics companies began to make TV/VCR hybrids in force.

Despite its flaws—tapes getting eaten, tapes wearing out, your little brother taping over something important—the VCR (#22 in our greatest gadgets) endured as a household staple until the rise of the DVD around the turn of the century. Even though picture quality improved immensely, DVDs did not solve the problem of movie lovers needing entire pieces of furniture for their stacks of physical movies. At least they didn't come with stickers pestering you to "be kind, rewind."